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Andrea and Mark Hotchkin
May 2026
Following the way
We write this letter from our temporary home beside Baptist House in Didcot, we are still in the UK and it has been 6 months since we arrived from Chad. Thankfully the medical treatment has gone well and we are getting ready to return, but it is all taking longer than we expected and currently we are working on a new partnership agreement with our colleagues in Chad so that we can have the support that we need. We spend time each day on language study and other reading but it is not easy to make sense of why it is so long since we were last working as doctors in Bardaï. Where is God leading us? We hope back to our home of 8 years and the hospital in Bardaï, but sometimes we wonder if we are listening well to him.
A few days ago, whilst looking for a map in a local book shop, we came across a book about pilgrimages in Britain. Within it there was a local trail that began not far from Didcot, the St Birinus Way. The name was familiar to us, only because the local catholic high school is named after him, but otherwise we knew nothing of his story. All the same we decided to incorporate it into a circular walk around the local area, a good way to relax on a bank holiday.
So, on the Monday morning we set out early on a walk through time and space. We started on a disused railway path, the remains of the Victorian DNSR (Didcot, Newbury and Southampton railway 1882 -1964). Its planned new tracks were laid for 46 miles and ran from Didcot to Winchester but for financial reasons the ambitious plan of a new track and terminus at the port of Southampton was stopped about 12 miles short of the sea. Less than a hundred years after it was built it was no longer needed and dismantled.
We also wondered whether our long circular walk of 22 miles might similarly prove to be over ambitious but pressed on across the flat Thames valley plain for 4 miles to our first objective, Churn Hill, at the start of the Berkshire Downs. Near the summit there is an Iron age burial mound, our official starting point, and over the next 12 miles we walked through rich farmland, saw crops growing , trees blossoming, many red kites and other birds, plus squirrels, rabbits and a couple of hares. In addition, we climbed over massive iron age earthworks, two of them hill forts and the third a huge defensive dyke between the rivers Thame and Thames just outside the Oxfordshire village of Dorchester. Finally, we arrived at our objective, the beautiful Dorchester Abbey, a cradle of English Christianity founded amongst the Saxons by bishop Birinus in 635 AD. Then we took the path for the final 6 miles back to Didcot shops, arriving home with fish and chips from the local shop. A fine circular walk, but was it really a pilgrimage - a transformative spiritual journey on foot?
Birinus, an Italian missionary monk, also known as a patron saint of missionaries, walked over the same countryside when he arrived in 634 AD. Albeit at that time much of the rich farmland of the Thames valley would have been marshes. Now the major difference is the presence of five ancient Anglican, one Catholic and one Baptist church. He was directly or indirectly responsible for founding them. It wasn't really his plan. He was blown off course when planning to go to already Christian Kent and arrived at the port of Hamwic (later Southampton) instead. From there, according to the Venerable Bede, he planned to “sow the seeds of the holy faith in the most inland and remote regions of the English, where no other teacher had been before him.” However rather like the railway mentioned above, facts on the ground got in the way, and not far from the start of his journey north he came across the West Saxons and as “he found all to be confirmed pagans, he thought it more useful to preach the word there, rather than to go further looking for people to whom he should preach”.
So, he came to Churn knob, the burial mound at the start of the pilgrimage, and preached to the assembled Saxons and in 635AD baptised King Cynegils in the river Thame at Dorchester. As we stood there, we were reminded that, like Abraham, Birinus had followed a call from God ,
'Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you' Gen 12. v1
and pondered three questions suggested by the Orthodox Christian Diocese of Atlanta,
Where is God asking you to trust beyond familiarity?
How can stepping into the unknown deepen your faith?
What “new land” is Christ inviting you to enter spiritually?
These are good questions for any time in the Christian life, and seem especially pertinent to us at this time.
At each of the five ancient churches we stopped, pondered, listened and prayed with suggested verses related to mission.
'Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect,' 1 Pet 3 v15
I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow.1 Cor 3 v6
Additionally in a side chapel at St Agatha, Brightwell-cum-Sotwell we read
As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him—you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house 1 Pet 2 v 4&5
And were invited to add a stone to those already on the altar.
And so, the day was spent, on the pilgrim route of Birinus, part of being on the way with Jesus, wherever in the world that may be.
Frustrating as it is to be so long in the UK, we have had the pleasure of celebrating our daughter Ruth's 30th Birthday, helped Rebecca our other daughter pack up her home in London and go as a volunteer at Iona Abbey for 4 months prior to studying a masters degree in Global Health, and at the end of this month we have celebrations planned for Andrea's mothers 90th birthday.
We thank you for prayers and support through this unusual time when life has not been what we have planned for, and hope that you too will be blessed with time to spend with families, friends and God,
love Mark and Andrea